


Stone-Blind

by illegible



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Written for a prompt!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-02
Updated: 2017-12-02
Packaged: 2019-02-09 18:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12894141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/illegible/pseuds/illegible
Summary: Inquisitor Cadash was born under the sky. Most times that suits her fine, but occasionally she does feel the loss of her heritage.





	Stone-Blind

Valta is clearly an Orzammar dwarf through and through. No mixed blood, pale from a life spent in shadow, wide black eyes and hair to match. Button nose, gentle, oh-so-soft-spoken. Very much a traditional dwarven beauty.  
  
Surfacers appreciate Malika well enough. She looks almost human in most ways. Sharp-features, thin lips, vibrant and loud and impossible to ignore. Almost like one of them.  
  
She’s been reveling in her status as Inquisitor for just that reason. It’s a chance to indulge in the finest Orlesian luxuries, Antivan wines, gilded statues and fine silks and a healthy amount of tribute. After years working her ass off with the Carta, years of (maybe justified) distrust, there are some real perks to being worshipped. Or her-worshipped, at least.  
  
Anyway, humans and elves and renegade Qunari all think she’s the greatest thing since tiny cakes. But Orzammar, of course, gives only the respect they’d afford any foreigner in her position.  
  
It'd be surfacer’s welcome if she showed. Practically not a dwarf at all, really.  
  
_Valta_ has the most ridiculously attuned stone sense imaginable. Even true dwarves think she’s dwarfy as balls. _Valta_ can read ancient dwarven runes and even more ancient runes she’s never seen that might not be dwarven at all. She knows legends the rest of the world has forgotten when Orzammar people obsessively build themselves on memory. _Valta_ lives, breathes, and speaks the Stone. It makes sense to her in a measurable way, a tangible way.  
  
It’s real. It’s something that should be every dwarf’s birthright, and she… Malika doesn’t have it.  
  
One day, or night, or whenever (Varric has a point, the Deep Roads are shit), they end up sitting side by side near the campfire. Ren just finished telling a story about some recruit who ripped a genlock’s arm off with his bare hands. No one’s really paying attention to the short girls talking quiet.  
  
Malika asks Valta if this is something she can still learn. Stone-sense… that thing she does with earthquakes.  
  
The Shaper only looks at her, face creasing in an expression like pity. Malika almost tells her to forget it right there, but Valta begins to speak.  
  
“Once, the Legion found a child running through the Deep Roads. He must have been seven or eight years old. He’d been living with deepstalkers for Stone knows how long. It must have been years.”  
  
“What does this have to do with me?” demands Malika. Valta only looks at her, silently, so she holds her tongue.  
  
“We took him in, cleaned him, gave him food. The boy couldn’t speak at all, and no matter how we tried to teach him he… was more animal than dwarf. He didn’t even move like we do. His time to discover language had already ended.” Valta pauses, then adds, “Stone-Sense is similar. When you get too old the opportunity passes. I’m sorry, Inquisitor.”  
  
Malika looks at her knees. Shrugs silently. Doesn’t look up.  
  
“What happened to the kid?”  
  
For several moments, Valta doesn’t answer.  
  
Then, “He went home.”


End file.
